Canadian Banks Made Millions from Illegal Secret Fed Loan

The other day I saw a video of Dennis Kucinich, an American Congressman, reviewing a scandal which I thought was years old. It was actually breaking news with important new information. Just when you thought Wall Street’s scandals couldn’t get much worse, details have come to light this week thanks to persistent investigative journalists who’ve revealed that the Federal Reserve gave $7.7 T R I L L I O N (Trillion, with a ‘t’) dollars to banks since 2008, interest free, to bail them out, on top of the TARP money of $800 Billion. If your mind, and sense of rage haven’t both blown up, you’ve either run out of steam or haven’t yet realized how much this has hurt you.

Occupy Wall Street exists in large part due to the people who cooked up this secret Fed loan (which has since been repaid, at no profit to the public, but with plenty of profit to private bankers estimated at $13 Billion). Canadian banks snuggled up to the secret trough too, even though they like to claim they never needed any bailout money. TD Canada Trust, Royal, Scotia, and many other banks all made hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from the American public’s money, in secret, revealed only due to investigative journalism. Congress was deceived (and if it was not, and was secretly in on the scam, then the public has a lot more to worry about).

Americans may be furious that Canadian and world banks made billions from their money, while there are literally millions of Americans living without healthcare that the rest of us take for granted. I expect people to go to jail for this kind of deception. Given what I’ve seen so far, I don’t expect even trials for the criminals who perpetrated this fraud that makes Bernie Madoff look like a schoolyard bully.

Occupy A Job

There is no shortage of angry people with no civics training, calling for Occupy Regina (Wall Street) protesters to “get a job”. As an Occupy Regina protester, I have a job. If I wasn’t employed, I’d still find a job volunteering, while I look for other paid employment. Those volunteering their time in Victoria Park are also doing a very important job: defending our constitution from attack, while standing up for justice and positive change that helps the people in our world who have less than we do.

Whoever said sitting peacefully wasn’t a political act that can change the world, has never heard of Rosa Parks, or Gandhi.

And City governments ought to think twice about infringing on protesters’ Charter rights in Canada, and First Amendment right in the USA.

Dream No Small Dreams – End Poverty

Should we eliminate poverty? It’s a ridiculous question made serious by people who have lost sight of their dreams in a wasteland of practicality and concession; They’re practical, to the point of inactivity where it counts the most. When a man has his feet nailed to the floor, do we stop the bleeding, but leave the nails in place and leave him immobilized?

Fiscal conservatives are arguing with me that trying to solve a massive societal problem will create other problems, so we shouldn’t even try to take the nails out of the feet of people. What if the man nailed himself to the floor? Well, healthy people don’t do that, so find out why and solve that problem. If you can anticipate problems when you implement a solution, that doesn’t mean you don’t implement the solution! Modern medicine prescribes a long list of drugs with known side effects, yet more people than ever take drugs. Some drugs are taken explicitly to deal with the side effects caused by the other(s) designed to treat the original symptom.

So do I think poverty can be eliminated? Of course I do! There are examples all over North America of communities without the symptoms of poverty (homelessness and hunger), we just have to scale the solutions up to extend into every corner of the province, country, and then world. Will there be people with less, and people with more? Yes, but those with less should have a roof, clothing, heat, food, and access to education/communication. We don’t have to give the impoverished everything from an iPod to a mansion, but we can give them the essential items anyone needs to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. After all, it’s hard to pull on bootstraps that aren’t there, and even harder if feet are nailed to the floor by hunger or illness.

thekyleguy Kyle Lichtenwald:
@joel_sopp wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t need soup kitchens. #SaskParty is so reactionary.

joel_sopp Joel Sopp:
@thekyleguy @saskboy Please explain. #skvotes

saskboy Saskboy K.:
@joel_sopp @thekyleguy if you eliminate poverty, there is no need for soup kitchens. Seems straightforward to me.

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So, if you’re wishing upon a star, wish upon one on earth. Don’t pick one in a galaxy far away.

Banks Refusing Your Money?

Did you know it’s possible to try and use your good credit, and functioning Visa or Master Card, and have the transaction refused for only $10? Try sending money to the corruption-busting website WikiLeaks, and you won’t be allowed! Visa and Master Card are among the willing participants of an ominous financial blockade that has all but shut down WikiLeaks for good.

Youtube had frozen the count at just over 300, in a possible attempt at censorship. Either that, or their counting routine stinks (which is also possible; never assume maliciousness where programming bugs are likely).

• Pull your money from Bank of America and PayPal, and use credit unions and Ripple Pay or Bitcoin. I’ve shut down my PayPal account.
• Use your credit cards as a last resort only.
• Write your political representatives and newspapers to tell them this blockade of WikiLeaks is corrupt and wrong.
• Join your local Occupy Protest and share the news of this blockade with other people you know.

SAVE WIKILEAKS, SAVE THE NEWS! FIGHT CORRUPTION!

Bank of America Gets Foreclosed

This is the feel-good story of the year. A couple, and a rookie lawyer, kick BoA in the ‘holdings’.

If it doesn’t play, you want The Daily Show with Jon Stewart : August 8, 2011 from The Pirate Bay. And you will want to watch this clip. Your life will be less fulfilled if you miss it, that’s how special it is.

WikiLeaks: Video Interview of Assange on Indian Corruption

The first part of this interview is also interesting. In this second part, to make a point, Assange reminds the interviewer that he had a Swiss bank account shut down within days of Cablegate breaking news in late 2010.

Assange also talks about Australian politics, and more about the corruption in “asset hiding” that goes on in the Caribbean and the “hostage” the Swiss banks hold now to try and prevent WikiLeaks from releasing more damning evidence of crimes by the banks.

Credit, but not on Cards

Canadians are wising up to the scammy interest on Credit Cards, but not to the danger of carrying tens of thousands of dollars of debt on a Line of Credit, too.

Use this debt calculator to determine how long it takes to pay off a debt.

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The last trip for Discovery shuttle is about to get underway.

Hackers Standing Up For WikiLeaks

Anonymous, the shadowy and informal group of professional and me-too hackers, has fought back against a security company devising ways for the US Government to subvert the usefulness of WikiLeaks. In this latest skirmish in the WikiLeaks cyberwar, Anonymous is the obvious victor. See what they did to this “security” company’s website: They made it serve up the company’s emails for everyone to download! Honestly, HB Gary doesn’t sound too different from the trolls that plotted how to libel Michael Moore over his movie Sicko. Except the HBGary trolls actually write malware (AKA Viruses) for the US government. Hey, it helps the economy to sell more antivirus software if there are more people paid to write viruses, right?

The unfortunate thing is that it’s not possible to pronounce “hbgary” so the public will quickly forget this instance of skulduggery. Another journalist who was the intended target of the US Gov’t attack, is no doubt firing back too. American citizens should be particularly outraged, as these trolls were trying to ensure that Bank of America gets away with its crimes.

The Real News Network – Truth as News?

A few years ago I took note of an apparent blog that had lofty goals to be a news network. I must have subscribed to their newsletter, or at least didn’t object to them noting my blog’s email address for them to send updates. Well, in 2010 The Real News Network started sending more regular updates, and was delivering their content in video format (using a frustratingly crippled YouTube-like viewer that I couldn’t embed easily into WordPress.com). They had a fund raising drive last month, and before the end of the year I decided I’d make a one time donation to the budding Internet TV station. It was a toss up over if I was going to send the money to a political party, or a charitable cause, and since sending money to WikiLeaks is decidedly more difficult now, I’m sending it to a worthy substitute — TRNN.com .

Paul Jay is a senior editor at TRNN, and explains in this five minute video why he chose the name “The Real News”, and how it’s different from CBC, PBS, and corporate news. It’s not that there are wholly bad journalists at other news outlets, its that their whole economic model shapes the way news is covered. The debate is framed by politicians and CEOs that get away with lying. The overall picture of reality that people are presented with is distorted as lies are talked about as if they are reality. This leads to people feeling disconnected, because they sense something is wrong, but they don’t have the facts to know why. They can’t see the patterns in the news stories.

Don’t Be Hard On Rich

Leave Larry Smith Alone! He’s been on the job for just a few days, and he’s getting a lot of unfair heat over his admission that he made a lot more money at his job before becoming a Canadian senator entrusted with implementing Stephen Harper’s agenda. How many people would take a 50% catastrophic pay cut? Admit to yourself that you wouldn’t, even if you lived within your $250,000/year means.

It’s not easy being a Michael Fortier clone, in a hopeless political battle for the forces of darkness. And you do have to give Smith credit for proclaiming that he turned down any cabinet role until he’s become a Member of Parliament and fulfilled his duty as an eligible back-bencher.

My point is that we’re all entitled to our entitlements, especially if we’re bilingual, Conservative, white, and wealthy.

An especially amusing comment on a news website, was that Smith, who makes as a Senator more than twice what a mortal Canadian makes in a year, cannot represent the common man. There’s actually a house in Parliament called the House of COMMONS that is supposed to represent the commoner. The Senate is for sober second though (which brings up the question why I know of an alcoholic senator), and is supposed to be a place for the rich to overrule the unwashed masses.

If you watch the videos of Smith being introduced, he pledges to work very hard to embed his team in the community that they have so little to do with, because they’re so rich and the community is not. He’s not afraid of reading a lot, or working hard for a few months until the next election.

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“Despite the fine work of many individual Senators, the Upper House remains a dumping ground for the favoured cronies of the Prime Minister.”

– (Stephen Harper Leadership Website, January 15, 2004)